


If You Are Lucky In This Life

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ageing, Dementia, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach, Mycroft brings John to meet their mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Are Lucky In This Life

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Lucky" by Tony Hoagland.  
> http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15515
> 
> One scene from this fic has been sitting in my mind for months. I just needed to get around to dealing with it. It's not a happy fic. It was difficult to write, and there are a lot of things unspoken here.

There was an autopsy, which John did not attend, and a funeral, which he did not manage to get to either. There was something about the flat, but he hasn't been back there. Not inside the door. Mrs. Hudson brought out his things. 

He spent one day moving into a new flat, and two weeks going mad. 

 

There is precious little furniture in the new flat, and no decorations. No room for them, with what he's been doing; with the papers. The papers are everywhere. Boxes spill them onto the floor; they cover the ratty sofa, the small kitchen table. On the walls they go up as far as John ca reach, held by thumbtacks and blue-tak and cellotape. They don't stop in the physical world, either. John has his laptop open, the screen covered in a near-childish scrawl of lines and notes drawn by mouse. He has neither shaved nor showered in all this time. 

He will figure it out. He will. He's stupid but he was trained, a bit, and the pieces must be here. He is staring at the same newspaper clipping on the wall he has stared at for the past hour when there's a knock on the door. 

He doesn't remember getting his gun, and doesn't realize it's in his hand behind the door when he cracks it open. When he sees Mycroft, and opens the door, and Mycroft glances down, he notices then. 

"Sorry," he says without meaning it. "Had a few unhappy notes. Some threats." 

Mycroft nods as though it were perfectly reasonable to answer the door armed. "Yes. I imagine that was why you left Baker Street. No need to bring that sort of… mess… down on dear Mrs. Hudson." 

John twitches. Turns his back, leaving the door open. Hears it close behind him; Mycroft's footsteps are as silent as a spider's. Carefully, John puts the gun down on an end table. "Suppose there's no need for that if you're here, then. Couldn't be safer, with you here." There is a wealth of bitterness in his voice, and when he turns back around, he sees that Mycroft's face goes blanker than usual. 

They stand in chilly silence for a long moment. Mycroft is the one to move. "John." John has looked away, in the silence, is back to contemplating the article on the wall. He looks up at his name though, and Mycroft is solemn. His lips are flat and his eyes are steady. There is a faint crease between his brows. John waits. 

Mycroft inhales, exhales. "Please, shower and change. There's someone I want you to meet." 

John gives a skeptical snort, but then hope blooms in his heart. Mycroft looks horrified at the thought he sees in John's eyes; he shakes his head immediately. "No, no, no. It's not… She's important, John. I need you to meet her." At the feminine pronoun, John's mind comes crashing down; Mycroft looks as though someone has stabbed him in the stomach. 

"Important," John says, after a moment. 

"Vitally," Mycroft says, and for the very first time since meeting him, John hears not the least trace of sarcasm or melodrama. 

So John gets dressed. 

 

There is a car ride, the majority of which John spends staring out the window. It ends in the country after a short drive on an unpaved lane. At the end of the lane is a gravel bit where the car stops; they sit in front of a small grey stone house. There are roses running riot in front, nearly obscuring the first floor windows. The pavers heading up to the front step are uneven. The door is ancient and battered. The roof is in pristine condition, though, and the gutters are solidly attached. 

At the sound of the car pulling up, the front door opens. A woman in a nurse's uniform is standing there. She is plump and sensible and looks as though she could lift a small pony with her arms; John has worked with her like before. They are as immoveable as battleships, yet retain the ability to hold a soap bubble without it breaking. Somehow, though, he doesn't think she's the one he's there to meet. 

He and Mycroft step out of the car, walk up to the door. She nods at them, eyes on Mycroft. 

"Sir. She's in the study." 

"Mary." He pauses. "How is she today?" 

The nurse, obviously Mary, gives an off-shoulder shrug. "Could be better, could be worse." 

Mycroft nods, but for a long moment he does not move. John looks at him curiously, flicking his glance over to Mary, then back to Mycroft. 

Mycroft inhales, then lets it out. Steps forward into the dim interior with a gesture to John to follow. John is distracted from his obsession for the first time in weeks. He steps forward with the feeling that he is both just now waking up, and entering a dream. 

 

The hallway is narrow and wood-floored. There is a long oriental rug acting as a runner, and flowers in a vase on a small shelf. Mycroft walks steadily, his steps metronome-regular on the floorboards. He turns right, through a doorway, into a small room filled with books, a few chairs, a piano, and an elderly woman. Watery light finters into the room from the front window; it is tinted green with the rose leaves that nearly obscure it. There is no curtain. 

She looks up as Mycroft steps into the room, and a dazzling smile breaks out across her face. She stands, tottering a moment, and John takes a step forward to help her, but she has her balance on an elegant black wood cane with a silver handle. She is beaming at Mycroft. "Darling!" she cries, and something in the tone of her voice makes John pause. 

Mycroft is still; his gaze at the woman is a practiced mask. "Good morning, Mummy," he says, and John is not the least surprised. 

She laughs flirtatiously, touches the coral beads around her neck. "Oh, you scamp! Don't you Mummy me. I haven't seen you in ages. Come give us a kiss." Mycroft steps forward dutifully and pecks her dry cheek, although she tries to turn her head and make it something more, and John feels the weight of this scene settle on his shoulders, a yoke, a shackle. 

Mycroft's mother laughs dryly, then peers at her son's face and frowns. "Sherrinford?" 

"Mycroft, Mummy," Mycroft says, and his voice is endlessly patient. She titters nervously, blinks, leans back from him a bit. 

"Oh no, you're not my little Mycroft, he's off at uni. No, Sherrinford, you're having a joke on me." She turns and walks with an arrhythmic step to the table where a bell rests. She rings it; Mary the nurse appears immediately. Just outside the door, John thinks. "Tea, Nancy, for Sherrinford and.." he eyes are deceivingly bright as they peer over at John - "Guest." 

John steps forward, passing Mycroft. "John Watson, ma'am," he says, holding out his hand. She lets him take her fingers. They are cold against his. She smiles at him, bemused. 

"Please, please, sit! Nancy will be in with the tea in a moment. Now, Sherry, do tell me what brings you down to visit? Is it a scandal? Is it that horrid German?" Her eyes are liars, John thinks as he sits carefully on a chair. They says she is fine. They are bright and alert and attentive. Mycroft sits beside her on the sofa. John wonders which horrid German she's referring to. Surely she's not old enough to mean Hitler? He scours his mind, but without knowing the decade or why the German is considered horrid, he has no way of knowing what the conversation is meant to be about. 

Mycroft moves through these waters with practiced ease. "No, mother. Actually, I brought John to see you, to meet you. He's a good friend of Sherlock's." Mycroft does not use the past tense. John flinches, and Mycroft does not look at him. Instead he keeps his gaze focused with perfect discipline on his mother's expression. He is still, waiting, careful, gentle. John feels his anger towards Mycroft vanish in that moment. 

He does not forgive Mycroft. He does not actually like Mycroft. But the anger, the acid in his stomach, the tense muscle he's kept locked in place for weeks, that's gone. He is not capable of maintaining it in the face of this. 

Mycroft's mother blinks at Sherlock's name. "Sherlock?" Her eyes are puzzled for a moment. She turns doubtfully towards John. "Sherlock is just eighteen, Sherrinford. John is…" Her delicacy is at war with her maternal instincts. 

John inhales, thinks quickly. He can do this. He smiles his most harmless smile. He will tell the truth, but nothing that would compromise her world too greatly. He really can do this. "We met at the lab," he says. "I used to work there, but I've been abroad. When I came home from overseas, there he was, inventing some new test. We began to talk, and have become friends, despite our great differences. He is a remarkable person." And every word is true, but using the present tense cuts through John like a knife. He did not think, before he spoke, that speaking the words would make him bleed inside like that. 

As he speaks her expression eases. She seems to have a naturally positive disposition, and wants to believe the best. When he compliments her boy, she smiles proudly, and he knows he has her won over. 

"Oh, he is, he is! He and his brother both. Such very different boys, Mycroft and Sherlock. Although," and her tone turns confiding, "So much more alike than they want to believe." Mycroft does not look as though he has sucked on a lemon. His face, John thinks, is the same face he would wear if someone told him that a nuclear bomb had gone off over Edinburgh, or that they had run out of scones for tea. For the first time John wonders if he learned that face for work, or for home. 

Mary-Nancy comes in with a tea-tray. Three cups, three saucers, a pot of tea, cream, sugar, and one small oblong bright green pill. Risperdal, John identifies, an anti-psychotic frequently used for advanced dementia. John watches Nancy-Mary deftly talk Mrs. Holmes into taking the pill. "Vitamin, dear," she says gently, and Mrs. Holmes nods. "Very important to keep up one's health," Mrs. Holmes says firmly, to the men. "Your mind is only as good as your body." John catches his breath in on a sob. Mycroft seems to age before John's eyes, but does not move. 

They stay for an hour. It is all John can stand. He hears about Sherlock's childhood and the lives of strangers. Mycroft never once grows angry or sad, and never once admits to being anyone but Mycroft Holmes. She even believes him for a few minutes. Her affect does not change, though, and she is as bright and empty with Mycroft as she was with Sherrinford and Gostbridge and Clembourne. John thinks all the people she speaks to are equally real to her, and the real Mycroft in front of her is conversely equally as false as all of them in her mind. 

They leave. She walks beside them to the door, stands on the stoop. Her eyes squint in the glaring grey light of an overcast day. She peers up into John's face, her gaze rheumy but the same silver-blue-green as her younger son's, and John's heart twists. Her expression is anxious. Her little hand comes up, pats gently on his cheek. 

"Watch out for my Sherlock, Mister Watson," she says in a voice so quiet John almost can't catch it. "Watch out for my boy, all right? He's not like other people." 

John swallows, hard. Tips his head a bit, trying to get control back before he speaks. When he does, his voice is steady. "Mrs. Holmes. I promise to do my best." 

She smiles then, and Nancy Mary leads her back into the house, and before she's fully turned away she has been distracted by the roses. "Oh, good," she says when she sees them. "Oh, so tall. I never like seeing them cut down, even though they can be such a bother." 

They sit in the car in silence the entire drive back.


End file.
